


Pick-Me-Up

by Kay (sincere)



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-05
Updated: 2012-08-05
Packaged: 2017-11-11 11:53:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sincere/pseuds/Kay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, Clint lent Natasha a sweatshirt. He never got it back, and assumed that it was lost, or left behind when they moved on to the next mission, or simply forgotten -- until he shows up at her doorstep after a rough mission to find her wearing it again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pick-Me-Up

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompt at be_compromised: "Clint leant Natasha his sweatshirt on a traumatic mission. Now and then he's seen her wearing it when he drops by. He doesn't comment on it, but it makes him smile when she's not looking."
> 
> I'll be doing prompts from there long after they won't accept them anymore, but whatev, I'll just post them on AO3.

Every time she got hurt in the line of duty, the concern leapt into his throat, threatening to choke his voice and overwhelm his reason. Every time, he throttled it back. His voice was always clear when he said a brisk, _"Need a hand, Nat?"_ and -- provided she was well enough to speak -- her response was invariably, _"I'm fine. Keep your eyes on your target, Barton."_

They were the only two ordinary humans on their team, and he worried about her. It was obviously the height of sexism to think of her as being more delicate than himself solely by virtue of being female, and if he ever voiced such a sentiment, he was extremely confident that she could and would put him in the hospital to show him exactly how misplaced his concern was. She was no weakling, and she had no pity, and her close-quarters combat skills outclassed his own.

But even knowing that she was no mere human, every time, without fail.

Maybe it was because he had seen that force of nature when she was small and hopeless, with tears clinging to her eyelashes, lost.

So when she took a heat laser to the thigh and he was sick of 'fine', Clint decided to pay her a visit after-hours.

He made his presence as appealing as possible. He brought a box of pizza and one of his favorite buddy-cop movies, which had at least as much cheese as the pizza. He wasn't going to ask even indirectly about her injury or about how she was feeling. All friend, all reassurance, no underestimation. Not Clint Barton, not of Natasha Romanoff, no sir.

But she threw him off immediately when she answered the door, obviously prepared for a salesman or someone similarly impersonal, and then said with surprise, "Clint," and opened it wide enough for him to see her: wearing tiny cropped jean shorts, and a sleeveless tanktop under a hooded sweater.

 _His_ sweater.

Clint stood there for a moment with his lips parted, and then he shook his head, holding up the pizza box. "Special delivery?" he said, offering it.

Natasha considered it, and the DVD in his other hand, and she said, "Come on in. I was just thinking about running out to get Chinese."

"You're in luck, then. Not only did I do all the work for you, it was even my treat. You can thank me later." Since she was turned away, he let his gaze slip to her thigh; the bandage on it was large and obvious, probably making it difficult for her to wear the simple fitted denim or yoga pants that she favored in her downtime. But then he looked up at the sweater again.

It was grey, lined waffle fleece. Very warm, very soft and comfortable. It should have looked silly on her: the neck was too big, hanging awkwardly mid shoulder on her, and the sleeves were ridiculously long, so that she had rolled them up almost in half and only gotten her forearms clear. It was a pullover, and its shape was too wide and too straight on her.

But it clung to her hips, slightly higher on one side, and it exposed her neck in such a sweet way...

And it was his. He had forgotten about it, assumed she'd lost it or left it behind.

Natasha padded into the kitchen on her bare feet. "You want a beer with your self-congratulations?"

"That's the _only_ way to enjoy self-congratulations," Clint told her, settling the pizza box down on the coffee table. He'd been in her apartment often enough before, so he headed to her entertainment center to take the DVD from its well-worn case.

She rejoined him in a minute, dropping down onto the couch near the pizza box. "Plain," she said approvingly.

"The only way to eat New York pizza. And nothing else compares, other than -- breakfast pizza."

" _Breakfast_ pizza? Seriously, Clint?"

"Eggs, bacon, cheese, bread. How can that go wrong?"

When he first met Natasha, she was a completely self-assured, deadly assassin who had given him a run for his money. He had stared down the barrel of a gun without flinching and searched for a flicker of humanity in her, some reluctance, some hesitation.

He found it. But it was months before he saw it naked on her face, months before the disconnect between her future and her past truly sunk in and she truly understood the extent of she had done and the things that she could never make amends for and she felt so adrift that a tear or two escaped past her shattered guard. She had told him, _"If you tell anyone about this -- I will deny it, and then I will put a bullet in your ear."_

And he had silently offered her the sweater. Something big and enveloping, to make her feel secure and safe. And he had sat next to her while she buried herself in it, looking so very small.

She had never said her feelings out loud; she had never really talked about it, or what she had been through in the Red Room. Natasha didn't talk about her emotions. She was Russian, as she liked to claim, deadpan humor.

But Clint had never needed Tasha to tell him her thoughts. Somehow, he had been able to guess, right from the beginning.

He caught the beer when she tossed it to him, settling back onto the couch. She immediately shifted her legs onto his lap, propping herself up casually over him as if the bandage were nothing of note, and Clint grinned, tipping the beer to her before taking a sip. "I didn't _bring_ the breakfast pizza, so you can't complain about it."

"So you have that much sense," Natasha allowed, opening her own. "And I suppose I can give you points for the movie."

She gave him a sidelong glance, and there was still a tiny bit of reserve in her eyes.

She was waiting for him to say something about the sweater, he thought. He chuckled. "So what does that bring me up to? Three points?"

"It would be a little hypocritical of me to keep rigorous count," she said, her own lips quirking up reluctantly.

"I don't want to hear about this ledger business anymore, Tasha," Clint told her, patting her ankle reassuringly. "You're the one who talked me out of counting, remember? You'll drive yourself crazy thinking of everything in terms of debt."

"I know. I only worry about the big ones now."

Her eyes were still on him, but she turned them to the DVD screen, repeating itself impatiently while it waited for them to dig up the remote control and turn it on properly. Clint found that his fingers lingered a little on her foot, curving slowly around the slim curve of her ankle, and he forced himself to move his hand back to the arm of the sofa.

"How did you know I could use a pick-me-up?" she asked. "How do you always know?"

Clint smiled at her. "That's how best friends work," he told her. "I wouldn't let my girl down."

He wanted her to know that if wearing his sweater helped comfort her when she needed a pick-me-up, then she could keep it, she could keep _all_ of them, but he could guess that she would be more comfortable if he never brought it up at all. She was Russian, after all.

Natasha smiled back at him, just for a moment. The DVD, bored, began playing itself, and that commanded their attention for one hundred minutes of action-packed fun.

It wasn't the last time that he saw her in that sweater. Clint grinned more when she wore it, like a fool, but he pretended he didn't notice. He liked to think of her wrapping herself up in it whenever she'd had a hard time and needed emotional support; that she rolled down the too-long sleeves and pulled up the too-big hood so that it shrouded her face, just like the first time when it had hidden her tears. He liked to think that it made her feel warm, sheltered, surrounded by his scent. He had the sense that if he commented on it, like a self-conscious cat, she would stop doing it, and he found that he rather liked the idea of a piece of him giving her comfort even when he wasn't there to offer it to her.

If he told her what he was thinking -- someday, when he _did_ tell it to her -- she would respond, in no uncertain terms, _"You're a real romantic, Barton,"_ with her most disapproving tone. But she wouldn't be able to deny it.

She wasn't _that_ good of a liar, and he always knew.

**Author's Note:**

> Shoot me if my next Clint/Natasha fic involves more significant longing stares of UST instead of them actually being hot and awesome together.


End file.
